Japan Wins World Baseball Classic on Fairy Tale Ending

Pure magic. There’s no other way to describe what happened in the World Baseball Classic finale last night.

Shohei Ohtani started the game as Japan’s designated hitter. In the later innings, Ohtani jogged out to the bullpen, threw warm up tosses, and jogged back in when it was his turn to hit. In the bottom of the 7th inning, Ohtani singled with one out, and I wondered if base running in between warmup pitches would affect his performance on the mound, should he be called on by Japan’s manager Hideki Kuriyama. Silly me.

Then, with Japan leading the U.S. 3-2 in the 9th inning, Ohtani jogged in from the bullpen and took the mound to face Jeff McNeil, Mookie Betts, and Mike Trout.

If you haven’t seen it yet—or even if you have—it’s worth watching the top of the 9th inning in full, with Dave Flemming and Yonder Alonso on the call:

Teammate against teammate. Power against power. Otherworldly superstar against otherworldly superstar. The Ohtani-Trout at-bat gave us everything we’d ever hoped for in a baseball game. Reality met the hype.

Mere mortals had no chance against Ohtani’s 100 mph fastballs last night. But Mike Trout is no mere mortal. He’s been the best position player in MLB since 2012, his first full season in the league. And it’s not particularly close. The only current MLB player who can challenge Trout’s claim to the mantle of “Best Baseball Player On The Planet” is Ohtani himself, because he puts up impressive offense numbers and pitches like a staff ace.

Oh to be a fly on the clubhouse wall when Trout and Ohtani see each other in the Angels’ spring training complex for the first time after last night’s duel.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how desperately Trout wanted to win the WBC title and chronicled how little Trout’s Angels have won since his rookie year. I place the blame for that squarely on Angels’ ownership and management for failing to surround Trout with the kind of lineup and rotation you need to win MLB championships. But last night’s showdown between Trout and Ohtani got me thinking about whether Trout is clutch.

Clutch is quantifiable— it is 2023, after all—and while there may be several ways of thinking about and calculating “clutch,” let’s start with FanGraphs’s explanation. FanGraphs approach boils down to: how much better or worse does a player perform in high leverage situations compared to how he performs in context neutral situations. FanGraphs’ approach to “leverage” is intuitive. High leverage are those plate appearances where the score is close, the game is late, and the outcome of the plate appearance is likely to determine the outcome of the game. Low leverage is the opposite.

It turns out that, according to FanGraphs, Mike Trout is the least clutch batter over the last 11 seasons. Now, remember, clutch is comparing how Trout performs in high leverage situations compared to how he performs overall. And since his overall performance is so absurdly good, it’s not that surprising that he doesn’t perform better than that in high leverage situations. Still, it’s hard to swallow the idea that Trout is unclutch.

I’ll have more to say leverage and clutch throughout the season. I may even revive a column I wrote for The Score one season on the clutch player of the week. Stay tuned.

The 2023 World Baseball Classic was a rousing success, in the U.S. and around the world. In the first round, the WBC set new records for attendance and TV viewership. More than 1 million fans attended a WBC game in one of four first round locations— Taichung, Taipei and Tokyo, Japan in Asia and Phoenix and Miami in the U.S. Those 1 million-plus tickets sold represented a 98% increase over the 2017 tournament. Adding in the quarterfinal, semifinal, and final games—all played in Miami—the total attendance of the tournament topped 1.3 million.

The TV ratings are measured separately in each country and in some places, were completely off the charts. In Japan, the March 10 game between Japan and Korea registered a 44.4 rating, a new record that was quickly overtaken by the Japan-Italy game on March 16, which drew a 48 rating—making it the most watched WBC game in any country in any year. That game also had a higher TV audience in Japan than any event during the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

During the quarterfinal game between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, 61% of all TVs in Puerto Rico were tuned into the game. And Japan’s thrilling comeback win over Mexico in the semifinals Monday night had nearly 2 million U.S. viewers on FS1, a big increase over the 2017 semifinal game that did not involve the U.S.

We don’t yet have viewership numbers for last night’s WBC finale, but the MLB’s YouTube video of the top of the 9th inning in last night’s game (posted above) garnered 1 million views in the first 13 hours after it posted.

Let’s put aside TV ratings and attendance numbers for a minute and remember that the players who participated in the World Baseball Classic absolutely loved it—even with the dramatic injuries to Mets’ closer Edwin Diaz (playing for Puerto Rico) and Astros’ second baseman Jose Altuve (playing for Venezuela).

Francisco Lindor, Diaz’s teammate on Team Puerto Rico and the Mets, told reporters that playing in the WBC is just as important as MLB. I’ve written about the joy that Randy Arozarena brought to the field every day. Even after striking out against Ohtani in the biggest at-bat of his baseball life, Trout still said that the WBC “was probably the funnest 10 days” he’s ever had and that he can’t wait to play for Team USA again in the 2026 WBC. Mookie Betts called it “a lot, a lot of fun” and encouraged other American players to join Team USA for the next go round.

I’ll leave you with Alex Verdugo, the Red Sox outfielder who played for Team Mexico.